Drones over Matteson: what's coming, who decides, and what Illinois left you
A plain-language guide for residents of Matteson and the towns around it. Amazon has filed for two drone hubs in the south suburbs, the only public comment window closed August 14, and Illinois law keeps the village from writing a drone ordinance of its own. Here is what is left.
The short version
Matteson, about 19,000 people, is one of two south-suburban towns where Amazon wants to launch its MK30 delivery drone: from the ORD5 warehouse at 7001 Vollmer Road, a mile from the village center, and from IGQ1 in Markham, six miles north. Part of Matteson, the village center included, is inside both 7.5-mile circles. The FAA's draft allows up to 1,000 flights a day from each, 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., and took written comment to August 14. No decision is posted.
Nothing has flown. The village's one documented act is a June 24, 2025 zoning letter saying the use is permitted by right. There was no board vote, and under a 2018 state law there cannot be a Matteson drone ordinance. Here is what the village, the state and you still hold.
Every block is marked Every US town or Matteson.
If you remember three things
Two hubs, two circles reaching Matteson. The FAA cap is 1,000 flights a day from each. Nothing has flown yet, and no FAA decision is posted.
The village can't write a drone ordinance. Illinois took that power in 2018 (620 ILCS 5/42.1). It still owns the lot, the building permit and its general nuisance rules.
Your consent is required before a drone drops a package in your yard. It is not required for one to fly over, and no one in Matteson can give you that.
Four questions, four parts
The tabs across the top are this guide's chapters. Each card below is one of them, labeled the same way. Start with the question that is yours.
Where DroneXL stands
DroneXL is not against drone delivery. Blood and organs between hospitals, a defibrillator to a heart attack before the ambulance, medication to someone who can't get out, tools and supplies to search-and-rescue teams in terrain a truck can't reach: those flights earn their noise, and some of them already fly. Everyday packages to homes may earn it too.
What we are for is doing it the right way: the least disruptive, safest, most accountable version, with the people living under the flight paths part of the conversation before the first flight rather than after. The country is in the middle of working out what that looks like. This guide, and the survey at the end of it, exist so that this town's answer is on the record.
Three things to hold onto
The sky is federal
Since 1958 the FAA has had sole authority over the navigable airspace. A city cannot ban overflight, set an altitude, or write a drone curfew. A federal judge struck down a city that tried in 2017.
The ground is local
Where a drone lands, where a package is dropped, whether a facility can be built, and under what conditions: that is zoning and land use, and it is the city's.
The window is before the first flight
Since July 28, 2026 the FAA approves most new hubs with no public comment period. A town that writes its rules early has leverage. A town that waits finds out from a press release.
Who delivers by drone in the United States
Three companies are rolling out home delivery at scale and saying so: Amazon, Wing and Zipline. Others, among them Flytrex, Manna and Wingcopter, fly trials and small services in the US without announced rollout plans; this guide adds them the day that changes.
Four words you'll see
- Nest
- Wing's name for its base: a fenced patch of a store's parking lot where its drones take off, land, recharge, and are loaded with the order by store staff. Nothing is launched from your street.
- Hub
- The same thing for Amazon, in the parking lot of one of its own warehouses. Zipline calls its version a dock.
- Service area
- The circle around a nest or hub that the drones can reach: about 6 miles for Wing, 7.5 for Amazon. Every home inside it can order. The base sits in one town; the circle usually covers several.
- Overflight
- A drone passing above your property on its way to someone else's. The FAA controls it; no town or homeowner can refuse it.
Wing (Alphabet)
Not namedNo Illinois entry on the FAA's drone environmental review index as of October 11, 2026, and no Illinois market on Wing's announced Walmart list. Its nearest named metro is Cincinnati.
- Aircraft
- Hummingbird, 14 lb (a 24 lb version in part of the fleet)
- Flies from
- A nest (its takeoff, landing and loading base) in a retailer's parking lot, usually a Walmart
- Reach
- About 6 miles from the nest
- Delivery
- Hovers at about 23 ft, lowers the package on a tether. Never lands at your house
- Hours (FAA)
- 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
- Volume
- Up to 400 flights a day per nest
Amazon Prime Air
Filed, in FAA reviewProposes the MK30 from ORD5 at 7001 Vollmer Road in Matteson, IGQ1 at 2201 W. 159th Street in Markham, and SIL3 at 27W501 North Avenue in West Chicago. The FAA draft allows up to 1,000 flights a day from each, 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., within 7.5 miles. Comment closed August 14; no decision posted as of October 11, 2026. No flights yet.
- Aircraft
- MK30, 83 lb at takeoff, no parachute
- Flies from
- Amazon's own warehouses
- Reach
- 7.5 miles from the hub
- Delivery
- Drops the package from about 13 ft
- Hours (FAA)
- 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
- Volume
- Up to 1,000 flights a day per hub
Zipline
Not namedNo Illinois site on the FAA's review index or on DroneXL's tracker as of October 11, 2026. Flies for Walmart in Texas and Arkansas and for Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
- Aircraft
- P2 Zip, 55 lb, carries a parachute
- Delivery
- Hovers at about 300 ft; a tethered "droid" lowers the package
- Reach
- About 10 miles
How a drone would actually reach your street
Matteson is not a town the drones might reach; it is a town they would launch from. The pad would be at Amazon's ORD5 fulfillment center at 7001 Vollmer Road, in the I-3 Industrial District, with the nearest homes about 2,000 feet to the northwest according to the FAA draft. Every address within 7.5 miles of that lot can order, and part of the village, the center included, is also within 7.5 miles of the Markham lot at 2201 W. 159th Street: by DroneXL's placement of the two lots they are about 6.5 miles apart, so the village's western streets fall outside the Markham circle. The FAA draft's own operating-area map could not be read for this guide. The two circles together cover Richton Park, Olympia Fields, Park Forest, Flossmoor, Homewood, Hazel Crest, Country Club Hills, Tinley Park, Frankfort, Chicago Heights and more; the FAA's list of towns whose parks it checked runs to about 50. The MK30 cruises between about 205 and 370 feet, drops the package from about 13 feet, weighs about 78 pounds (83.2 at takeoff), carries 5 pounds, and has no parachute.
Distances are straight-line from the center of Matteson, near Village Hall at 4900 Village Commons. The dashed ring is 7.5 miles from the village center; Amazon's real circle is drawn from the ORD5 warehouse at 7001 Vollmer Road, about a mile east, and a second circle of the same size is drawn from IGQ1 in Markham, six miles north, so Matteson sits inside both. The two hub markers are the positions recorded in the DroneXL tracker, not surveyed points. Town markers are well-known town-center coordinates. The FAA's description of the three operating areas is in its draft assessment, linked under Sources.
How approval works now
The part most towns get wrong. Since July 28, 2026 there is usually no public comment step at all.
The operator picks a site and files with that town, if the work triggers a permit
Often it doesn't. Amazon told a Massachusetts audience that about 80% of its hubs were approved administratively, with no hearing. Northglenn, CO heard from Walmart, and Tacoma, WA received a Walmart building permit application, weeks before Wing announced either metro.
The FAA checks the site against one national environmental document
Signed July 28, 2026. A hub under 1,150 deliveries a day, at least 600 ft from homes at full volume, aircraft under 110 lb, flights under 400 ft: cleared internally. No draft, no comment period, no local hearing. Before July, each metro got its own review with about 30 days for public letters.
The company issues a press release
By then the decisions are made. Papillion, Nebraska found out when a reporter counted about 50 Amazon drone movements in an hour over a suburb whose council had never voted on any of it.
The only early warning is your own planning counter
A permit application at city hall, or a planning commission agenda item, is the first and often the last public signal. Fifteen states have sued the FAA over the national finding; the window for anyone else to challenge it closed September 26, 2026.
Full detail: How drone delivery approval works on the DroneXL tracker.
Who owns what
FederalThe FAA
- All airspace, flight paths, altitude
- Which companies may fly, and where
- Aircraft design, parachutes, in-flight noise
- Daily flight caps and hours in the air
- Whether any environmental review happens
Authority since 1958; restated by the FAA in 2018 and 2023. For a licensed air carrier, a second law also bars states from regulating its routes and services.
CityVillage of Matteson
- Zoning: is a hub a permitted use, and where
- Site plan, building permit, conditional use permit and its conditions
- Ground hours, lighting, screening, traffic, noise at the property line
- Consent for delivery onto private property
- General nuisance, trespass, litter and privacy law, as long as it doesn't single out drones
StateIllinois
- Whether villages may regulate drones at all: Illinois said no. Since August 3, 2018, regulating unmanned aircraft systems is "an exclusive power and function of the State" (620 ILCS 5/42.1(b)), a denial of home rule powers, with one exception for a city of more than 1,000,000 people, which is Chicago. A 2024 amendment lets a village set rules for private drones over its own parks and conservation land (42.1(b-5)); that covers the park district's airspace, not yours
- Dropping objects: Illinois requires a permit from IDOT before anything is dropped from an aircraft, naming the person, date, time, place and object, filed at least 14 days ahead (620 ILCS 5/43b; 92 Ill. Adm. Code 14.440). Violation is a Class A misdemeanor under 620 ILCS 5/79. The rule was written for leaflets over a fair, and whether it reaches a Part 135 delivery drone is untested; DroneXL put the question to IDOT in September 2026 and had published no answer as of October 11
- Privacy: the Freedom from Drone Surveillance Act (725 ILCS 167) restricts police drones only. No Illinois statute names recording by a private or commercial drone, per the Attorney General's guidance on the Act; general trespass and privacy law apply
- Could write: hub siting standards, resident notification before launch, a local complaint contact, data retention, who pays for damage. All of it would be an amendment to 42.1 or a new section of the Aeronautics Act, and the General Assembly has amended 42.1 once already, in 2024
- Has done: the 2018 preemption; the 2024 parks carve-out; Illinois's attorney general signed the multistate comment letter on the FAA's national drone delivery review on January 23, 2026, and Illinois is one of the 15 states that petitioned the Second Circuit on September 28 to set the national finding aside. That suit is about the national document, not the Chicago draft
What a city can and cannot do
The test case is Singer v. City of Newton (2017): a federal judge struck Newton's altitude limit, overflight ban and local registration, and left land use alone.
Overflight is airspace. Richardson, Texas dropped a rezoning threat on legal advice and now points residents to their senators. Source
Altitude, overflight and local registration are the rules the court in Newton struck down.
Aircraft design and in-flight noise are FAA rules. Worth asking the operator about; not something a council can order.
Land use is the city's. Most towns have not yet written a drone facility into their zoning code at all.
A rule about what happens on the ground. Every operator already requires the customer to opt in.
The same rule the delivery truck lives under. A general rule applied to drones survives; a drone-only rule invites the challenge.
Northglenn, CO's draft ordinance (first reading Oct. 12, final vote set for Oct. 26) would require any applicant to disclose hours, altitude, noise, aircraft count and flight frequency, plus an incident plan with 24-hour written notice after any crash. Source
Castle Rock and Parker, CO froze hub applications in July 2026. Legal, but it only moves the pad one town over. Source
The record so far, document by document
Matteson has no drone or delivery ordinance, and under 620 ILCS 5/42.1 it cannot adopt one. What exists is a paper trail: two zoning letters, one company announcement, one show-and-tell in Tinley Park, and one FAA draft with a 30-day comment window. Newest last.
The village's zoning letterJune 24, 2025 · FAA draft, Section 1.2
The FAA's draft, written from Amazon's application, says the ORD5 site "is located within the Village of Matteson's I-3 Industrial Zoning District" and that "The Village of Matteson executed a zoning confirmation letter on June 24, 2025" confirming drone delivery is permitted by right. That letter is the village's one documented act. No board agenda item, staff report or vote on the drone pad appears in the posted 2026 Board of Trustees minutes (January through July, the latest posted as of October 11); DroneXL did not review the 2025 minutes, and the village's own news page describes the service as coming, not decided. Ask to see the letter; it is a public record.
Markham's letterNovember 4, 2025 · FAA draft, Section 1.2
Markham's IGQ1 site at 2201 W. 159th Street sits in the city's L-3 Motor Freight Terminal District, and "The City of Markham executed a zoning confirmation letter on November 4, 2025." The nearest homes are about 1,900 feet northwest, per the draft. City administrator Derrick Champion told NBC 5 in February the program could add about 50 positions at a warehouse that employs about 3,000. Matteson residents get no vote in Markham, and Markham's circle reaches into Matteson.
The announcement, and the building plansFebruary 11 to March 2, 2026
Amazon and Markham officials announced the south-suburban launch on February 11 for "later this year." On March 2 at the Tinley Park Convention Center, Amazon showed a static MK30, said it planned 15 drones at each center, and said of the village permits: "We've submitted our building plans." Amazon said the plans were under local review; the building permit is the ground-level approval the village still issues. Launch was promised for summer 2026 and did not happen; Amazon's August 19 expansion notice said only that Chicago would launch "soon."
Four sites in April, three in JulyApril 23 and July 15, 2026
An April 23 FAA memo, reported by the Daily Herald, listed two northern sites, in Winfield and Morton Grove, alongside Markham and Matteson. Morton Grove's mayor said the village had told Amazon the use was "not an acceptable use." Winfield's village manager said: "The village has no jurisdiction in the regulation of drones." The July draft names three sites: ORD5, IGQ1 and SIL3 in West Chicago, on the DuPage side. The draft does not say why the fourth is gone; the FAA's noise memo in Appendix E still refers to four.
The FAA draft and the only comment windowJuly 15 to August 14, 2026
The draft proposes "up to 1,000 MK30 drone delivery flights per operating day at each PADDC," a potential maximum of 3,000 a day across the three; operations "between 6 a.m. and 10:30 p.m., up to seven days per week," with up to 100 flights a day in the 6 to 7 a.m. and 10 to 10:30 p.m. edges; cruise "between approximately 205 and 370 ft AGL." Comments went by email to the FAA in Washington, "by 5 p.m. Central time on August 14, 2026." There was no public meeting. The FAA's noise appendix measures the MK30 at 63.7 dBA SEL at 200 feet in cruise and puts the DNL 65 dB contour 150 feet from a pad running the modeled volume, and the draft finds noise below its threshold even within half a mile of a hub. Whether any Matteson resident or the village wrote in is not public until the FAA publishes its comment appendix.
What the village was sent, and whenFAA draft, Appendix A
The FAA's outreach list for the draft names Village President Sheila Chalmers-Currin, the six trustees, the village administrator and the directors of economic and community development as contacts, and lists Community Development Director Ernest Roberts again in its site table. Whether any of them answered is not in the appendix. The same list names the officials of Richton Park, Olympia Fields, Park Forest, Country Club Hills, Hazel Crest, Homewood, Tinley Park, Flossmoor and Frankfort, and Cook County's planning director.
What is still to comeNo date
The FAA has to decide the draft: a final assessment with a signed finding, or more study. Then it acts on the amendment to Amazon's Part 135 operations specification, which is not public. Nothing was posted on the FAA's review index as of October 11, 2026. Amazon's launches elsewhere this year came 41 days before the FAA's signed decision in Omaha and with no comment period at all in Tracy, California, so the order of events here is not guaranteed.
Read the full text: FAA Draft Environmental Assessment, Amazon Prime Air, Chicago, July 2026 (PDF).
What's still open for the city
The lot and the permit
The pad is on I-3 industrial land the village already said is permitted by right, so there is no hearing to win. What is left is the building permit Amazon applied for in March and whatever conditions Matteson's site-plan and building code attach to any industrial permit: screening, lighting, hours of ground work, a named local contact. Ask the board to publish the June 24, 2025 letter and the permit file, and to say what conditions it set. A condition written about the aircraft rather than the lot is the kind 42.1 was written to preempt. FAA draft, Section 1.2 (PDF)
Disclosure, by agreement
Matteson cannot order what Northglenn, Colorado wrote into its code. It can ask Amazon, in writing and in public, for the same facts: hours, altitude band, aircraft count, daily flight frequency, a complaint line that answers, and written notice to the village within 24 hours of any aircraft coming down. Amazon has agreed to conditions elsewhere, including a 1,000-foot eagle buffer in Omaha. A letter from the village president costs nothing and goes on the record. Northglenn staff memo (PDF), the model
Springfield
The lever Belvedere, California used sits in Springfield here. The General Assembly wrote 42.1 in 2018 and amended it in 2024 for parks; it can amend it again for delivery hubs: siting distance from homes, notice to residents before launch, a complaint contact, data retention, liability. Separately, IDOT holds a dropping-permit desk under 43b that nobody has asked to rule on an Amazon flight. Matteson's representative chairs a House committee; its senator's east office is in the village. 620 ILCS 5/42.1
Gone
The comment window closed August 14. The 2018 law took the ordinance. What the federal record still offers is the FAA's decision, and after it, the 60-day window under 49 U.S.C. 46110 to challenge it in a federal appeals court, which belongs to anyone with standing and a lawyer, a village and a county included. The state's suit against the national finding does not reach the Chicago draft, which was reviewed on its own. DroneXL on the 15-state suit
Before the vote
A checklist. Ticks are saved on this device only.
Once drones are flying
Don't consent, if you don't want deliveries
Every operator requires the customer to opt in. It is a personal choice, not a shield: Amazon told a Westborough, Massachusetts ballroom in September 2026 there is no opting out of overflight. Read more
Keep a log, then complain with dates and times
Date, time, altitude, duration, direction. What living under it sounds like: a Richardson, Texas resident counted 52 Amazon drones over her yard in a day, and the FAA's own Baton Rouge filing puts an Amazon delivery hover at 92 decibels measured 25 feet from the aircraft. After Richardson residents complained, Amazon raised its outbound altitude to 225 ft and moved routes over commercial land. Amazon left College Station after two years of noise complaints. Read more
Ask the operator the 15 questions
Weight, parachute, what happens after a collision, sound at 50/100/250 ft, how often one street is overflown, what the cameras record, who pays for damage, who gets the call when one comes down. Zipline answered in part; Amazon and Wing have not. Read more
Report what comes down
The Drone Delivery Tracker logs every hub, market and incident on the public record. Several rows exist because a resident sent photos. Read more
Who to contact
Parts of Matteson may fall in other House or Senate districts; check your address on ilga.gov. Federal: the FAA's comment window on the Chicago draft closed August 14; the FAA takes drone questions at 844-359-6982 and noise inquiries at faa.gov/noise/inquiries. Neither changes a decision; both create a record.
Have your say
Two minutes, anonymous. No name, no email, no address. Results are public, update live, and are feedback from people who chose to answer, not a scientific poll. Modeled on the independent Westborough, MA survey that reached 853 responses and three state legislators in six weeks, without the name and street it asked for. The FAA's comment window closed August 14 with no public meeting; this is the count that process never took.
Read the documents yourself
Every claim in this guide traces to one of these. If a document says something different from this page, the document is right and we want to know: send a correction.
Matteson
Every US town
Matteson never got the argument Belvedere had
Belvedere, California spent the autumn arguing about hours for a drone that does not exist. Matteson has two hubs in a federal file, a combined cap of 2,000 flights a day, two circles reaching into a village of 19,000, and no argument at all, because the one public step was 30 days of email to Washington in July and August, and because in 2018 Springfield took the pen out of every village's hand. The village's whole record is a zoning letter. I do not think that is Matteson's fault. It is what Illinois law and the FAA's process leave a town of this size.
My read of what I could read of the file: the FAA draft is careful about eagle nests and historic farmsteads, and the noise appendix gives a cruise figure measured in Oregon and a contour that stops 150 feet from the fence; nothing in the portions I read describes what 1,000 flights a day sound like to the subdivision 2,000 feet from the pad. Papillion, Nebraska got the same paperwork; once the drones flew, a TV reporter sat outside the warehouse and counted about 50 movements in an hour. An 83-pound aircraft with no parachute, dropping from 13 feet over yards with mature trees and overhead wires, is the wrong aircraft for a first suburban Chicago service. Zipline's P2 hovers at 300 feet, lowers the package on a tether and carries a parachute; that is what doing it right looks like, and Amazon has not been asked to match it by anyone who can make it.
None of this is an argument against drone delivery. Medicine to someone in Park Forest who cannot drive, a defibrillator across I-57 in four minutes: those flights earn their noise. A phone charger at 10:15 p.m. has to earn it, and the people under it get a say. In Matteson the say is three things: make the board publish the letter and the permit, make Amazon put its hours and its phone number in writing, and make Meyers-Martin and Hastings amend 42.1 so the next village gets more than a zoning letter. The FAA has not decided. The village meets October 19.
Spotted a mistake? Here is how to get it fixed
Every fact in this guide is meant to be checkable against a document listed above. If something is wrong, out of date, or missing (a meeting moved, a permit decided, a number that does not match the filing), tell DroneXL and it gets corrected, with the change logged below.
- Use the correction form at the bottom of this page (jump to it). Pick "Correction," name the guide (Matteson, IL), quote the sentence, and say what it should say. A link to the document that shows the correct fact gets it fixed fastest. The form can be sent anonymously.
- Or email [email protected] with "Correction: Matteson guide" in the subject line.
- What happens next. The claim is checked against the primary document. A confirmed error is corrected on the page and noted in the "Updates" log below with the date; a material error also gets a correction note on the DroneXL corrections page. Readers who report an error are not named unless they ask to be.
City officials, operators and residents are all welcome to use this. Disagreement with DroneXL's take is not a correction, but it is welcome in the comments.
Updates to this guide
Spotted an error, or something that changed? Every fact on this page is meant to be checkable against the documents in the Sources tab. Corrections and updates: how to report an error or the correction form below (anonymous if you want), or email [email protected]. Fixes are logged in the Sources tab with the date.
This is reporting, not legal advice. DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Editorial standards · Corrections policy
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